


Secrets

by lmontyy



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ellie - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Love Confessions, Pain, Secrets, TLOU, The Last of Us - Freeform, dina - Freeform, ellie williams, more requests needed, the last of us 2, the last of us part 2 - Freeform, the last of us part ii, the last of us part two, tlou 2, tumblr request 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 23:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21026822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmontyy/pseuds/lmontyy
Summary: One thing was for certain: Ellie was down there somewhere. But the reason why Dina’s stomach was in an unfathomable knot was because she wasn’t certain if Ellie was alive, or dead.





	Secrets

They were out in the middle of nowhere. No one knew where they were. No one knew where to even find them. Where would anyone even begin to look? Maybe the trail they started off on? Probably. But where would they go from there?

Dina’s mind raced at a million miles a second. 

The cabin was completely abandoned, only the shell of life that past remained there – nothing but emptiness and darkness and the smell of blood everywhere. There were scratches at the doors and windows, the unruly and shaking hisses and gurgles of the monsters outside the residence trying to break through, rip her limb from limb, completely drown her in her own blood, break her bones and rip her throat out from behind the skin of her neck.

She was alone, trapped in the bathroom that was falling apart at the seams. The window a solid foot or so above her head was lightly cracked. She could get out right now, she could run for the horses, if they were even still there, or just run into the snowy trees and never look back. But she couldn’t do that, not while Ellie was still somewhere in the house.

It took all of the willpower in the world not to scream out for her. But she knew the consequences. Make enough noise, even the smallest bit, and all the clickers would come running like she were a peaceful escape from their rotting bodies, like they were dogs chasing their next meal.

Everything around her scared her. The slight shift of the light, the sun hiding behind the clouds and turning the world a shade darker, the wind blowing the trees and the branches of snow rattling, everything made her head spin around and her heart beat wildly. The world made her fear every little sound, every movement. Every breath she took, her mind tricked her into thinking it wasn’t even her own.

There was no going around it, though. She would have to find Ellie. And she would have to do it silently.

The mirror had been shattered, most likely from a fight previously, which had sent shards of glass on the sink and all over the floor, stuck in the carpet and resting on the tiles. Dina took a piece of cloth hanging off the side of her bag, and wrapped it tightly around one of the butt ends of a shard of glass nearly as big as her hand.

Crouching down, she slowly, as quietly as she could, turned the doorknob, and let the door just barely squeak open as she hastily stepped out and behind and overturned bed, with the mattress facing the door. She gave it a moment before continuing forward – she didn’t know if any nearby clickers heard the squeaking of the door as she stepped out.

When nothing happened, Dina continued stepping forward, through the doorframe and out of the bedroom. The hallway was completely clear, but faint growls were bouncing off the walls from distant rooms. The staircase, just to the right, was covered in blood and the bodies of two dead clickers, which she killed on her way up when clearing the cabin. Downstairs, she could hear the moans and groans of more roaming around down there. None of them sounded all too aggressive, which to her, was one of the biggest reliefs, yet worst fears, of her life.

One thing was for certain: Ellie was down there somewhere. But the reason why Dina’s stomach was in an unfathomable knot was because she wasn’t certain if Ellie was alive, or dead.

Knowing that Ellie had never come up the stairs, Dina started to make her way down the noisy stairs, every slight tip-toe causing a small squeak she would quickly have to mute by removing her weight off the wood. Strategically, she had to find every spot that the board was sturdy – which weren’t many – and step down that way. When she’d found all of the sweet spots and made it to the last stair, she touched down onto the solid, hardwood planks of the first floor. Thankfully, the floor underneath her didn’t make any noise, which allowed her to get around much faster than she could on the second floor.

The front door was wide open to the winter air about ten feet in front of her, and the cabin opened up off to the left and right. To the right, the kitchen, dining room, and bar, and the left, the living area, the closets, the lounge, and the garage. Where Ellie had went, she had no idea. Clickers stalked all around in both sections, so either way, she was stuck. The door might as well have been shut and locked, because that was not an option.

If Ellie had been searching for food, she would’ve went to the kitchen. Dina started off by running along the wall, of the open, high-roofed dining room, the table marvelously still intact, with only a few chairs upturned or thrown aside. From underneath the table, she was able to see into the kitchen, where she saw a multitude of clickers.

Cursing under her breath, Dina made a plan of how she wanted to go about it. Behind the bar, it was clear. She made a quick dive for the bar, hiding behind the table, where there was an almost complete skeleton, with plenty of bottles surrounding it. Some were full, others were broken or empty.

Taking the matches from her winter coat pocket, she lit a stray piece of paper she’d found in the shelves underneath the bar table, which she recognized quickly to be a suicide note left by whoever’s skeleton that was. Unfortunately, she had little time or heart to respect the note at this point, so she set it aflame with a single match, tossed it into an open bottle full of what looked and smelled like a pungent whiskey, and threw it off into the dining room, where a stray clicker hand wandered.

The entire table quickly burst into flame, with the clicker catching fire alongside it. The crash followed by its screams quickly prompted all four of the clickers inside the kitchen to come sprinting out, giving Dina an open break for the door, which she quickly took, not without throwing another bottle towards the opposing wall, and listening to them scramble for it.

In the large kitchen, it looked completely trashed. The cabinets were flung open and off, there were scraps of food and wrappers everywhere, broken glasses and plates and silverware all over the place. The fridge was wide open and completely empty. She had little time to check the entire space, but she managed to get the pantry room open to check for her missing friend. To no surprise, it was just as empty.

Before the clickers could return, she made her way back behind the bar, where she had deliberately left some bottles there. She took one of the empty glasses that were left, and chucked it through the door of the kitchen, where it smashed against the floor with a sickening shatter. The bodies went running through the door once again, giving Dina ample time to escape back towards the steps.

Finding refuge behind the stairwell, she snuck up to the wall leading to the opening to the living space. Coming right through the doorway was a small clicker, about the size of her, though it had not seen her. She stayed put where she was, until the body came through the door just enough that she could grab it, stab it with her newfound weapon, and leave its motionless body off to the side before surpassing the doorframe and crouching behind the upright couch. 

Again, there were more clickers. In order to deal with them, she took what looked to be a wooden plank that had fallen from the ceiling, and threw it at the nearest window, which was about twelve feet away, sending it crashing through the glass and landing on the porch outside. The window, now cracked open, had clickers flying out of it to follow the noise.

She maneuvered her way around the living room, and towards the back, where there looked to be an extra hallway, leading out into the sunroom and what looked to be a closet, and finally, the garage.

If Dina knew anything about Ellie, it’s that one of her first go-to’s is the garage. She had no reason to go into the sunroom unless to hide, and closets were definitely not a smart place to go, and she knew Ellie knew that.

Heading for the garage, she closed each door quietly as she continued down the hall, keeping the clickers in those respective rooms without means for escape. Putting her ear to the door to the garage, she heard absolutely no sound, save for the wind outside in the trees.

Stupidly, in a panic, she ran through the door, opening it without a care. The door squealed violently as she burst through the door, and it was then her blood turned to ice and all the breath left her.

The scene in front of her was a rather big garage, with one car and many shelves and tables, but the entire area was infested with at least eight to ten clickers. She froze as they all wailed and turned to her outline in the door.

Her limbs wouldn’t move, completely glued together, and her breath stopped short as one of the nearby ones charged right for her.

In a flash, a body was thrown in front of her, and her vision was blocked. Before she could render what was happening, she was pushed against the wall, with Ellie standing right in front of her, having slashed the clicker across the neck, stabbing it in the head. The redheaded girl stood, knees bent, knife bared in front of her.

It was in that moment, that moment of despair, as she watched multiple clickers launch themselves at the girl in front of her, did she realize how desperate she was to not lose Ellie. It was in that very moment that she realized that she needed Ellie more than anything else in the world, and she was willing to die to keep that beautiful girl alive.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a clicker sprinting toward Ellie from the left side. Springing into action, Dina threw herself and her shank in front of large claws and flesh-ripping teeth, digging the glass into the clicker’s face in a desperate attempt to keep it from harming Ellie.

Turning to her in surprise, Ellie blinked in a hasty thanks as she threw a large, standing shelf to the floor to protect them from the right side. Sliding herself over the table, the redhead ensured Dina’s safety behind the table and shelf, while Ellie went out in front of the table, which was mere inches away from the car, to keep any clickers from getting over or around the obstacles, which would inevitably lead them right to Dina.

With a prying force, Dina pushed her way around the table, watching in awe as she watched Ellie take down clicker after clicker, until there was only about three left. Dina was able to kill one, and Ellie made her way over to kill the last two clickers that had been playing chase with her around the car.

It was a mere second of realization – maybe less – that there had been a second door leading out to the garage from the sunroom. And the only way Dina realized in that moment that they had been compromised was when Ellie’s pained, dreadful scream echoed off the walls of the garage, and a clicker’s teeth had found their way into the skin of her ankle.

All of the blood dropped to her feet, and she felt the oxygen completely vanish from her lungs. Every muscle in her body froze in sheer horror. 

Ripping out her pistol from its holster in a bounding fury, Ellie put three Shorty rounds into its head, before turning the gun on the two other clickers she’d been attempting to kill earlier, and sending them flying across the garage with bullets tearing apart their rotting bodies. As more and more clickers piled in at the gunshots, Ellie, who was braced against the car with an unrelenting amount of blood pouring out onto the floor around her, continued to fire round after round of bullets into the heads and bodies coming through the broken doorframe. It had taken maybe a minute or two for the pile of them to stop collecting flesh, and for the house to ring silent.

When Ellie tried to take a step, her leg gave out, and she fell to the floor with a wail. It was then that the life returned to Dina in an utmost panic, and dread ran up and down through her body like a lightning bolt sending shocks through her veins.

“Ellie…” She ran for the girl, who was now crouched on the floor, holding her ankle in distress. “Ellie, oh my God!”

Dropping to her knees, Dina slid forward, taking the girl’s leg in her hands. She had basic medical training, and she did know how to patch up wounds pretty good. But she knew all too well that this was completely out of her hands. She was utterly useless now.

Many a time did she watch huge, strong men, unstoppable women, and young children fall to the horrible disease. And she knew Ellie would be no different – she would suffer the same fate she had to watch over and over again.

Ellie couldn’t really even muster a full sentence. It was obvious she was completely overrun with pain and torment. The wound was terribly deep, almost deep enough to reach bone.

“No, no, no… okay…” Dina tried to steady herself, in her mind assuring herself Ellie would be fine, and she would live. But Dina knew better. “No, you’re gonna be fine. You’ve gotta be.” She gently laid her friend back, putting the back of her hand to her forehead. Sweat stained her pale skin. 

“Di…” Ellie struggled to speak, trying to sit up and grimacing through clenched teeth, only to make a sound of pain and sink back down. “Di…”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Dina’s hands hovered over Ellie’s bloodied, struggling body. She didn’t know where to touch, where to even place her hands. “Stop moving, stop moving.” The frantic tone in her voice was unavoidable now. There was no hiding the panic that was coursing through her.

“I’m… fine…” The injured girl muttered, biting down hard on her own teeth. “I’m fine…!”

“No, El, no, it bit you!” A devastated Dina argued. “It bit you!”

“I can’t…” Ellie tried to speak through gasps, and it was just barely successful. “I can’t get… infected…!” Each word came out in a strangled manner. “I can’t get infected.”

“What? That’s bullshit, Ellie!” She denied immediately, trying to keep touch with the reality of the situation. Ellie trying to convince her she’d be fine was one of the most panic-inducing things she could’ve been doing. “You got bit, Ellie, you’re infected.”

This is the end, Dina thought, her thoughts crashing down on her all at once. She’s going to die. I love her and she’s going to die.

Tears fought their way past her eyeballs, and fell off her dark eyelashes.

“No, Di…” Ellie insisted. “Look, just look…”

As Ellie began rolling up her sleeve, Dina couldn’t bear to look anywhere at the girl in front of her. “No, Ellie! You get bit, you get infected. That’s how it works!” Her head fell into her palms. “I can’t… I can’t lose you, too…” She pleaded under her breath.

Ellie bared her tattoo to Dina, who was unamused and completely frantic.

“Why are you showing me that right now?” Dina demanded. “You just got bit and you’re trying to show me your tattoo, Ellie, really?”

“No, damn it,” Ellie growled in frustration. “Look, look closely at it!”

Squinting her eyes, Dina was able to make out a shape behind the ink. A very similar shape to the one on her ankle, as a matter of fact.

“Wh– What is that?” Dina gaped, the confusion becoming overwhelming.

“It’s a bite, Di,” she sighed, exasperated. “I got bit years ago. I’m literally fine.”

“H–How…” It was quite challenging to grasp the reality of the situation, she realized, for in all of the years she’d worked to try and help and heal others, she’d never seen someone survive a bite, never, not once. “How is that… how is that possible…?”

Ellie sighed again, as if explaining this was something she’d never planned on doing ever in her life. “I’m immune,” she said simply. “Some mutation in my genetics, apparently. All I know is that I’m fine.”

It took several minutes for Dina to process all of the emotion hitting her at once. Just a second ago, her body was breaking down in a horrible panic, as she believed Ellie would be dead by morning. Then, right after, after the combat and the bite, Ellie told her news that strip away the thought before it, turning her mentality from one plane to the completely opposite one. She was overwhelmed with relief.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed. “Why didn’t you fucking tell me?”

“It isn’t something I go around just advertising!” Ellie answered, defensively. “You know what people would do to get a hold of me if they found out I was alive and I had a cure to this nightmare running through my veins?”

“God, El,” Dina hardly even listened. “I was so fucking terrified. I thought you were going to die! I just… turned and I watched the thing bite you and I literally lost all touch with my own body, Ellie! I thought I was going to lose you!”

“Dina…” Ellie said through a breath, and slumped back into the car, the loss of blood making her feel weak and overrun with exhaustion.

It was with that breath that all the emotion flowed through Dina, and all of it was coming out, whether she wanted it to or not.

“I panicked! I literally thought you were going to die and my whole body shut down…” Sobs pushed their way up and out of her throat, coating her words in the most heartbreaking tone she’d ever heard from herself. She broke down in her own vulnerability. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it would’ve been like, what it would’ve felt like to have to go home knowing I left you behind. I can’t even aim a gun at you, let alone pull the fucking trigger!”

She was cut off by her own heavy breathing. When she regained the breath back into her lungs, she continued.

“I love you, Ellie, I love you so much–” There it was, the bomb. “–I love you.” She brought her body down so it enclosed around hers, careful of avoiding her wounded ankle. “I can’t bear to even think of losing you, god damn it!”

Crying into her shirt, Dina continued to wrench the girl closer. When Ellie’s arms encircled her, her heart broke into a thousand pieces. 

“I’m sorry…” Ellie whispered. “I’m sorry, I love you too.”

Shaking off her shame, Dina sniffled and stood up suddenly, unwilling to render herself so vulnerable any longer.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you up. Let’s go home.”

“Alright.”

Helping Ellie up, she was able to get Ellie’s full backpack and supplies and lead her to where the horses quietly sat in the encasement of the backyard. By the looks of it, only one had either run away or been killed, because only one of the two large horses stood within the gates.

Dina assisted Ellie with hobbling up onto the back of the saddle, while Dina followed suit, sitting with the rope pulled taut in her hands. She hadn’t even bothered to secure the bags to the horse – she just needed to get her and Ellie home safely. 

It was a quick ride, about ten minutes, before they reached the Jackson camp. Upon pulling in, the first thing the security guards did was take the injured and nearly passed out Ellie down from the horse, and ran her off to the med bay. Dina took the horse to the gate of the ranch, and gave the lead over to the horse keeper. It took no more than two minutes for Dina to reach the med bay, and be beside Ellie’s bed while she awaited for an emergency doctor.

There was nothing but silence that fell over the two at first. IV tubes ran into Ellie’s strong arms, which had allowed her to stay awake and give her the necessary fluids to keep her from losing consciousness. Any longer out in the cold and she might never have made it to the IVs in the first place. Those kinds of thoughts really did get under Dina’s skin, but after her sudden confession back in the garage, she wasn’t prepared to show it. 

Ellie finally broke the silence.

“Did you mean it… you know… what you said?” She asked gently without looking up from her covered lap.

Dina didn’t answer at first. Would she lie? Tell her she said it out of panic, and the adrenaline had possessed her words? Or would she just be completely upfront with her, and tell her every feeling that had played on her mind for months?

Among all of the thinking, the only thing she could muster was a simple: “Yeah, I did.”

Ellie continued to gaze into her lap.

“Thank you,” she said in a tone so light that it was heartbreaking.

“What are you thanking me for?” Dina demanded, taken off guard.

“Being honest with me,” Ellie shrugged. She broke another moment of silence with the most devastating words. “I love you.”

Dina had had enough emotional impact for the day. Those words passing Ellie’s lips were words she’d only dreamed of. Words spoken from someone she loved dearly, someone she wanted to kiss and hold and love. And as happy as she was that Ellie reciprocated her feelings, Dina’s stomach was in enough knots to tell her she had to back off for a second.

“I know,” Dina whispered. “Just… get some rest. I’ll be back in the morning.” Dina leaned in to press a gentle kiss to the girl’s hairline, her hand finding its way onto hers. With a hard squeeze of her hand, Dina released, and turned to walk out. She didn’t look back at the sweet girl behind her.

The events of the past few hours really hit her as she walked down the white med bay halls, and at one point they caught up so fast with her that her whole body froze in the middle of the hallway.

The two of them going out together, finding the cabin. Then the clicker attack and getting separated, then risking her life going throughout the entire cabin looking for Ellie, only to find her and watch her get bit, which garnered the most terrified panic she’d ever experienced in her life.

It was in that moment that it hit her: Ellie, she loved her, and she almost watched her die that day. She almost lost her forever.

And with that final thought playing on her mind like a needle touching upon a spinning vinyl, the sound of the girl she loved confessing her love for her repeating in her mind, she turned around and sprinted for Ellie’s room with tears in her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!  
This is another of the Tumblr requests I received for these two.  
My tumblr handle is @lmontyy, and I take any and all requests, (so long as they're not unreasonable or crazy!) but I'm very easygoing when it comes to writing, and do enjoy writing for others.


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